


Different Kinds of Dancing

by aheadfulloffollies



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Grief, Sapphic, Some kissing, f/f - Freeform, pretty gay, yk how it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26096350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aheadfulloffollies/pseuds/aheadfulloffollies
Summary: Luna comforts Ginny after the War and her breakup with Harry.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	Different Kinds of Dancing

**Author's Note:**

> No one:  
> Me: HAVE SOME LINNY!!! :DDD  
> Seriously though I love these women and this ship is one of my favourite things to ever emerge from Harry Potter (beyond the fact that it’s a fucking magical civilization with a boarding school for children, four personality houses, and involves lots of idiots being put in charge of saving the world. That is my SHIT). Hopefully you’ll enjoy this, I actually don’t think it’s too bad??? Miracle of all miracles lol.

Luna didn’t know what she had expected returning to Hogwarts for seventh year. Everyone dealt with the traumas from the war differently; she knew that. She tried her best to accept that not everyone knew how to laugh and cry at the same time. And after everything, it was well enough to let people go through their processes. Interfering wasn’t her place.

She told herself this over and over again as she stared at Ginny, eating porridge across the Great Hall. She didn’t enjoy porridge, but that wasn’t what worried Luna. In the grand scheme of things, what was a bowl of oats and milk? Not much, really, certainly not worth the time and energy of twenty minutes spent anxiously tittering and deciding things only to take them back. What _was_ worth that time was comforting her friend in a way that didn’t involve delving Ginny into the things she hated most to wallow in sadness or maybe even feel something at all.

Breakups were hard. Losing family was harder. Both together was something akin to disaster, and Luna commended Ginny for even still going to classes. At least, she mused, she had enough will to eat something, even if that something was porridge.

Harry Potter was not a bad person. He never did any wrong by Ginny other than breaking up with her, but it would have been cruel to the both of them for him to not. Despite knowing this, she still held at least the smallest bit of resentment towards him for causing her friend such great amounts of pain.

Luna Lovegood might have been a bad person. Maybe not by the things she did, but she knew full well that her intentions toward wanting to help Ginny were self-serving. Not entirely, but that was certainly a large part of it. Even without knowing if Ginny liked girls, Luna wanted ever so badly to help her and, in the process of doing so, give into her own love a little bit more. But Ginny loved Harry, not her. Despite knowing this, she still wanted to have her friend back again… and, if she were lucky, as more.

Making her decision under heavy influence of that tiny glint of a smile she managed to see on Ginny’s face as she watched three first-years enter the Great Hall in a manner not all too different to one Harry, Ron, and Hermione might have, she stood and walked toward the near-empty Gryffindor table.

“Good morning,” she said tentatively.

Ginny mustered a half smile but no words in response.

“You know, wrackspurts are easier to get rid of if you think positively,” Luna said after a moment. “But the same doesn’t work for broken hearts, does it?”

“No,” Ginny said softly. “It doesn’t.”

\---

“The worst part isn’t that he broke up with me,” Ginny said, walking through the Hogwarts courtyard. “It’s that I don’t feel sad about it, not really. We had our time, and it was great and all, but it’s over now. We weren’t meant to be forever.” The words weren’t serene. She said them as they were: a harsh truth, the end of a love, not softened but made sharper by the fact that the love, now lost, once had truly been real.

“I should be sad. I should have been sad, at least for a few days, don’t you think?” she asked, and Luna had the feeling there was no answer Ginny wanted to hear to that question. “But I just felt… relieved.” She shook her head, flaming hair a stark contrast to the day that seemed to have an aura of grey surrounding it.

“I don’t know. I guess, after everything, it just feels wrong to move on. Like, bloody fucking hell, Fr- my brother died. He… I’ll never see him again. Ever. But if I could keep everything else the same, like a snapshot of time, maybe… maybe it would be like he were still here. And then I could love and not feel like shit about it because it would be, I dunno, something I know he got to see. Not that that makes sense.”

It did. It made perfect sense. Luna had felt the same way, once, when she first lost her mother. Like living was a crime if the person she loved most wasn’t there to see it.

“What would Fred want?” she asked, wondering if the question would do any good when Ginny had surely already contemplated the answer. But maybe she needed to hear it from someone other than her own mind.

“Laughter,” she answered without a single hesitation. “He’d want me to smile.”

“Have you?”

“No,” she said quietly. “Not since Harry and I broke up.”

Luna considered her words carefully. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but at the same time, was there really a right one?

“People have this way of coming back to us, even if not in ways we expect. I know everyone says it, but Fred is here. Not when you live like when he was alive, but when you live as if he still is. And it’s hard, I know, but… Ginny, you deserve to laugh again.”

The silence between them felt charged, like a firecracker before it exploded. Luna wondered if, when it did, it would be more like the colourful sparks or smoke.

“I don’t know how,” Ginny whispered. She didn’t have to specify for Luna to know what she meant.

“Oh, I’ll help you, then,” she said, a delighted smile bursting from her face. Taking Ginny’s hand, she held it and placed her other on her back as she began to lead them in a dance in a seemingly endless field of green grass and blue sky and hazy mists of love and loss.

“Wha- what are you doing?” Ginny asked, caught off guard as Luna twirled her.

“Dancing!” She laughed, pulling her a little closer again.

The responding laugh resonated across the open space between them. It was loud and brash and the tiniest bit rusty, dry from weeks of misuse. What was even more beautiful than the sound that had captivated Luna since fourth year, however, was the look that came to Ginny’s face at the noise. Something like pure ecstasy flying on the wings of hope and joy couldn’t even begin to compare to the light that shined from her smile.

“You’re beautiful,” Luna whispered, unable to contain the words for a moment longer.

Ginny’s expression froze. Luna’s heart skipped a beat. Her words left no room for interpretation, she knew that. This could be the end of a friendship, or the start of something new.

Normally she liked silence, but it had never felt this loud.

They continued dancing, the chaos of Luna’s mind and thrum of Ginny’s heart their only song. She took quiet solace in that Ginny, although not reacting with pleasantries or joy, also had not pulled away.

Continuing to lead, Luna twirled her again and was so lost in admiring the whirlwind of red hair and freckles that she didn’t quite notice how close they were standing when she pulled her back.

“ _This_ is beautiful,” Ginny said, tightening her grip when Luna tried to put some distance between them. “Dancing with you. I’ve been doing a lot of it,” she said, looking away, past her shoulder to some far away distance no one else could ever go. “Dancing, I mean. But none of it as lovely as this.

“There’s this sort of sadness that sets in when you realize that your boyfriend doesn’t love you anymore and, although you love him, it’s not in the way that you should. And the sadness is horrible, but it’s better than the dread that comes when you start to notice that the reason you don’t love him romantically anymore is because you love someone else.

“The last time I felt dread like that was when it set in that Fred… that he wasn’t coming back. Just this horrible feeling that I’ve missed out on something beautiful but it’s too late to go back and now the things that are coming will only be worse. That’s not real, I know, it’s a stupid fear my bloody mind made up to keep me from living, as if that’s going to protect me from pain. Which is a shit excuse.

“So I’ve been dancing around the reality that he’s gone, and I’ve been dancing around my feelings, and I’ve been dancing around the fact that life actually does go on. But this…” Her gaze turned glassy, haunted by tears that couldn’t quite fall, and Luna had the urge to wipe them away. “This is worth any sort of pain a wall might protect me from. I can’t have pain without living but I can’t have something so wonderful as this feeling, either, and I’d rather die than give it up.”

They were moving slowly now, barely shuffling as a cool breeze and Ginny’s touch brought goosebumps to Luna’s skin. This felt far more intimate than before, far more right, but she had to be sure.

“Who was it that you loved?”

“You.” Nothing more than a whisper, the quiet wrinkle of a million daydreams falling off the fabric of their creation and coming to life.

Nothing more than a single puzzle piece, clicking into place.

Nothing more than a feeling of sunshine and stars and smiles and everything bright in the world, because nothing could ever be quite so wrong again now that she knew.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Ginny asked, a tickle of a laugh rising in her like the rouge that coloured her cheeks. Luna herself hadn’t even noticed her effervescent smile until it was pointed out, but that only succeeded to broaden it.

“Because I love you too,” she said simply, the joy in her heart so loud it overpowered any thrum of nervousness that might have tried to intrude on such a momentous occasion.

“Oh,” came the quiet affirmation, the reality of feelings too strong to hide finally coming to light.

Ginny pressed her lips softly to Luna’s under the bright sun and hazy sky, and there were no more words needed after that.


End file.
